High-concept filmmaking gets low mileage in Rubber, an exercise in horrific absurdity that is neither as scary nor as amusing as it hopes to be.

The central conceit of a mysteriously sentient car tire wreaking havoc upon unsuspecting humans in the California desert might have worked as an SNL short. Stretched to feature length, even Rubber’s relatively fleet 82 minutes, it inadvertently proves the adage that brevity is the soul of wit.

Directed, written and edited by Quentin Dupieux, a French musician with moxie to spare — he shot it using the video function of his still camera — it’s a postmodernist horror parody that never settles upon its target.

The film opens with a car plowing through chairs arrayed on a desert highway. Backwater cop Lt. Chad (Stephen Spinella) appears, addressing the audience about irrational occurrences in movies, such as the chair incident we’ve just witnessed.

Fancying himself a film scholar, Chad talks directly to camera: “All great films, without exception, contain a certain element of ‘no reason.’” He informs us that Rubber is “an homage to no reason.”

True enough. Taking self-referentiality even further, Dupieux then introduces what you might call his Geek Chorus, a group of strangers standing near Chad, gazing through binoculars at some distant event.

“It’s already boring,” a kid says.

What they’re watching is the emerging main narrative of Rubber. An abandoned and dirty car tire, awakening to the sound of flutes, rises out of the dust and acquires a killer instinct along with telekinetic powers. We’re informed by the credits that the tire’s name is “Robert.”

With just a few jerks of its worn tread, Robert discovers that it can make nearby objects explode, suggesting what might have happened if David Cronenberg’s Scanners had been filmed at Canadian Tire.

Not content to merely crush pop bottles or explode rabbits — a nod to the Coen Bros.’ Raising Arizona — Robert sets out to mess with humans. It begins by stalking a French tourist (Roxanne Mesquida), who is slow to cotton to the rubber menace in her midst.

So are all the other humans, some of whom learn of Robert’s explosive abilities at their peril. Meanwhile, in yet another bizarre tangent, the highway gawkers run afoul of a malevolent chef — everyone but a determined codger in a wheelchair (Wings Hauser).

No doubt Dupieux and his crew enjoyed themselves making Rubber, and they do deserve credit for nimble animation and lensing of their wheeled wacko. A couple of the jokes connect, such as the visual pun of Robert in a hotel room watching a car race on TV.

Perhaps they enjoyed themselves too much. Had they stripped Rubber of its sillier elements, they might have conjured a genuine “no reason” horror film, something like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds or even John Carpenter’s Christine.

Instead, they’ve given us something that’s hard to roll with, although it’s one that may ultimately prove to be a calling card for a better project.

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